On the night of the party,
looking out from the 8th floor,
someone asked,
Do you feel you’ve made it?
Do you look at all this and know
you’ve made it?

The inside of me said, No,
said, Where?
(The inside, like bluish tar,
talks fastest, longest.)

After, when I hadn’t left the apartment in a week,
I rested elbows on the windowsill,
breathed onto the glass a white fog.
Around me: the silence that comes only
from completely dark apartments.
Outside sounded like everything.

I opened all the windows wide,
removed screens, quickly but one at a time,
and didn’t fall.

Yes, I’ve made it, maybe.
To the beginning of